"A fascinating, epic exploration of who gets to record the world's history -- from Julius Caesar to William Shakespeare to Ken Burns -- and how their biases influence our understanding about the past. There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as "objective" history? In this lively and thought-provoking book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other...

Harnessing the technology from the latest CGI video game flight simulators this puts the viewers behind the cockpit pitted against enemy aircraft in some of modern history's greatest air battles.

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But historian Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind...

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1998" Derek Sayer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He is the author of several books, including (with Philip Corrigan) The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution. In The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare gave the landlocked country of Bohemia a coastline-a famous and, to Czechs, typical example of foreigners' ignorance of the Czech homeland. Although...

"As a columnist for the Washington Post, Alexandra Petri has watched in real time as those who didn't learn from history have been forced to repeat it. And repeat it. And repeat it. If we repeat history one more time, we're going to fail! Maybe it's time for a new textbook. Alexandra Petri's US History contains a lost (invented!) history of America. (A history for people disappointed that the only president whose weird sex letters we have is Warren...

From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans. America's backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory.

An iconoclastic look at America's past: overlooked episodes that shaped the nation's destiny and character. Spanning a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington's inauguration in 1789, these narratives bring to light little-known but fascinating, myth-busting facts. Read the story of the first real Pilgrims in America, who were wine-making French Huguenots, not dour English Separatists; the coming-of-age story of Queen Isabella,...

"Truth Has a Power of Its Own is an engrossing collection of never-before-published conversations with Howard Zinn, conducted by the distinguished broadcast journalist Ray Suarez in 2007, that covers the course of American history from Columbus to the War on Terror from the perspective of ordinary people--including slaves, workers, immigrants, women, and Native Americans. Viewed through the lens of Zinn's own life as a soldier, historian, and activist...

In this New York Times best-seller, Norman F. Cantor digs through the medical evidence and concludes that the Black Death of the 14th century was probably two diseases at once: bubonic plague and anthrax. He shows how these diseases affected the masses as well as individuals, and thus altered history. Concise, informative, and touched with dark humor, this book is a startlingly fresh view of a frightening epidemic.

"From the masters of storytelling-meets-science and co-authors of Quackery, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks-how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us. Written in the authors' lively and accessible style, chapters include page-turning medical stories about a particular disease or virus-smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, HIV-that...